Date: Thursday, March 15, 2018
Time: 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Location: 4 W 43rd Street, New York
Room: Blue Room
Convened by:
Women’s Human Rights Education Institute (WHRI)
UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women in Law and Practice (WGDAW)
Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL)
CEDAW Committee of Trinidad & Tobago (CCoTT)
Indigenous Women’s Alliance for CEDAW
Speakers:
Melissa Upreti – Special Rapporteur of UN WGDAW, CWGL
Terry Ince – CEDAW Committee of Trinidad & Tobago
Jean Chong – Sayoni, Outright International
Anya Victoria – WHRI LAC Regional Program Director
Angela Lytle – WHRI Executive Director
Explore the utility and importance of CEDAW and UN WHR Special Procedures for feminist advocacy, including the WGDAW, in the context of heightened backlash against women’s human rights globally and within the UN. Key civil society initiatives using these mechanisms will be shared, strategies for moving forward collectively explored.
For more details and to RSVP: https://goo.gl/DqUcxP and/or email: info@learnwhr.org
PANEL CONVENER BIOS
Melissa Upreti is a human rights lawyer and women’s rights advocate who has spent nearly two decades advocating for the recognition and fulfillment of women’s rights through the use of national, regional, and international law and mechanisms. A well-known reproductive rights expert, she is currently Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women in law and practice (WGDAW), a Special Procedure of the Human Rights Council. Ms. Upreti is Senior Director of Program and Global Advocacy at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University in the United States, and a Fellow in the University of Toronto Law Faculty’s International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program.
Terry D. Ince is the Convenor and founding member of the CEDAW Committee of Trinidad and Tobago (CCoTT), a non-governmental organization committed to stakeholder advocacy for the implementation of the CEDAW convention and its mandates, through collaboration, education, development, advocacy and wisdom sharing in Trinidad and Tobago. A social entrepreneur and rights advocate, Ms. Ince has worked extensively with for-profit and non-governmental organizations in developed and developing countries and underserved communities.
Jean Chong has been an LGBTQ activist for 18 years. She is currently Program Field Coordinator with OutRight International, and is part of the Steering Commitee of the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, a regional network of South East Asia LGBTIQ groups lobbying for the inclusion of LGBTIQ rights in the ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism. In addition, Jean co-founded Sayoni, a queer women’s organization based in Singapore who organise, do research and advocate for equality in well-being and dignity regardless of SOGIESC.
Anya Victoria is the LAC Region Program Director for the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute. A feminist human rights lawyer from Mexico, she worked previously with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Mexico City. She was fellow for the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights; lead researcher in the Latin American and Caribbean region for the Due Diligence Project and coordinator of a UN Trust Fund project to develop a model to eliminate gender violence in indigenous communities.
Angela Lytle has been the Executive Director of the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute since 2009, and is a feminist educator and women’s human rights advocate. She has worked with CEDAW and WHR as a trainer in the WHRIs educational programs, as a resource person with IWRAW-APs Global to Local program for NGOs at the CEDAW Committee, and as ally to the South Korean movement for survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery. She recently coordinated a study on “good practices” in the elimination of discrimination against women for the UN WGDAW, and is undertaking PhD research on women’s human rights and feminist movement building.